Academic year/semester: 2024/25/2

ECTS Credits: 2

Available for: All OU students

Lecture hours: 2
Seminarium:0
Practice: 0
Laboratory: 0
Consultation: 0

Prerequisites: none

Course Leader: Zoltán Horváth, MA

Faculty: Ybl Miklós Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering, 1146 Budapest, Thököly út 74.

Course Description:
The course offers an opportunity for those interested in ancient Egyptian civilization to obtain a more detailed view of the cultural context of ancient Egyptian architecture. Students may learn about the wide range of environmental, political, socio-cultural and technological conditions, the internal dynamics of which have shaped the evolution of ancient Egyptian architecture for more than four thousand years.
The lectures first provide the course participants with a general overview of major domains of ancient Egyptian culture, then move on to the analysis of case-studies in the fields of mortuary, temple and settlement architecture, respectively. A deeper understanding of cultural differences and how these have been articulated in architecture is a major issue to be pursued.

Competences:
able to comprehensively handle aesthetic, functional, technical, economic, social and legal expectations throughout the design process

Topics:
Week 1: Major properties of the landscape and a brief historical overview. Natural resources and their utilization in architecture.
Week 2: Ancient Egyptian language and scripts. Religion and creation myths.
Week 3: Afterlife beliefs and funerary culture. Biculturalism.
Week 4: Mortuary architecture I: from late neolithic cultures to the end of the Early Dynastic period.
Week 5: Mortuary architecture II: Old and Middle Kingdom pyramid complexes. The evolution of private burials.
Week 6: Mortuary architecture III: royal and private burials during the New Kingdom. Third Intermediate and Late Period tombs.
Week 7: Temple architecture I: the concept of “temple”. Iconography and functionality. Early shrines.
Week 8: Temple architecture II: early and mature formal temples.
Week 9: Temple architecture III: late formal temples. The temple as a canon.
Week 10: Domestic and urban architecture I: early settlement sites. Organic and pre-planned settlements. Old Kingdom pyramid towns.
Week 11: Domestic and urban architecture II: town planning in the Middle Kingdom, Lahun and Abydos South.
Week 12: Domestic and urban architecture III: the New Kingdom towns of Amarna and Deir el-Medine.
Week 13: Egyptianizing architecture in the Western world during the Egyptian revival.
Week 14: End-term paper.

Assessment: End-term paper

Exam Types:

Compulsory bibliography: none

Recommended bibliography: Barry J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, London 1989 Ian Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford 2003 Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids, London 1997 Lise Manniche, City of the Dead: Thebes in Egypt, London 1987 Eric P. Uphill, Egyptian Towns and Cities, Princes Risborough 1988 Dieter Arnold, Die Tempel Ägyptens, Augsburg 1997

Additional bibliography: none

Additional Information: none